What became of us

Promise?’
    ‘Of course not,’ Annie said, her face suddenly brightening into a salacious smile as she remembered. ‘How was it, by the way?’
    ‘He didn’t turn up,’ Ursula said.
    ‘Oh. I’m sorry. Bastard. Actually, probably just as well in the circumstances.’
    ‘Yes.’ Ursula didn’t trust herself to say more.
    ‘Call me,’ Annie said, closing the door.
    ‘Thanks.’
    Ursula walked down the stairs and past reception with the linen dress under her arm.
    ‘OK?’ Liam asked as she opened the passenger door.
    ‘OK,’ she said.
    ‘I saved you a bit of croissant,’ he said, ‘it’s very good.’
    He handed her the paper bag that he was using as a plate. It was covered in flakes of pastry and toasted almonds crusted with icing sugar. She put a piece into her mouth. It was sweet and fatty and tasted like the apotheosis of everything sinful in her life. Shameful and delicious at the same time. She looked sideways at her companion. If in the future she ever thought about her affair with Liam, she knew she would remember this moment, the taste of sugar and almonds, the slight leathery smell of the interior of his car, and the overwhelming feeling of having done wrong.

    ‘How long before your train?’ he asked, as he drew up at the station.
    ‘About seven minutes.’
    He switched off the engine.
    She wished she had said two minutes and then they would not have been obliged to talk.
    ‘What will you do?’ she asked him politely.
    ‘I thought I might go out to Woodstock. Have lunch at the Bear.’
    ‘Look, I’d better get going. I need to buy a paper to read.’
    ‘OK, then.’
    She gathered up her overnight bag and her handbag from the floor. And then she looked at him. He was staring through the windscreen, not looking at her. This was it. This was the last time she would see him, unless they happened to bump into each other in court, where they would nod professionally at one another and turn away, and she would probably manage to go over on her heel as she attempted to walk nonchalantly away from him.
    She wondered if it would have been different if Barry had not phoned, but she couldn’t help thinking that in a way she had had a lucky escape. In the cold light of day, Liam’s lovemaking felt as humiliating as it had the previous evening, and she could not believe that they would have found themselves this morning in perfectly harmonious sexual union. Her body felt so tender she could hardly bear the thought of being touched. But still, seeing the end of it all so stark in front of her, she was biting back tears. The affair, which she had never quite believed in, had proved her right by not really happening after all.
    As she opened the passenger door, he smiled at her and she could see the relief in his eyes. He was clearly finding this as difficult as she was, although she suspected for different reasons. She closed the door again. His face fell.
    ‘What was it that you saw in me?’ she asked, determined to know, because if she did not now, she never would.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘What was it that you found attractive?’ she persevered.
    He thought for a moment.
    ‘Your eyes,’ he said.
    ‘My eyes?’
    ‘They’re an incredible colour, both startling, and startled. Your gorgeous hair...’ he reached over and pushed a lock of it behind her ear.
    ‘... and I suppose, your innocence. For an intelligent woman you are so very innocent,’ he said, smiling at her.
    She didn’t know whether to feel flattered or patronized.
    ‘They’re not real,’ she said, suddenly, ‘my eyes. They’re contact lenses.’
    For a moment he looked slightly disconcerted but said nothing. He did not ask what she had seen in him. It was obvious. He was clearly used to daft middle-aged women falling for him.
    She opened the car door again, and looked back at him one last time, ‘Bye then,’ she said, pulling herself out of the car and slamming the door without hearing his response.
    He accelerated away, and she watched the car as it circled the car park then roared towards the exit.
    She thought of Meryl Streep in Bridges of Madison County watching Clint Eastwood’s van disappearing down the long farm track at the end of their illicit weekend together.
    But instead of thinking, ‘I am giving him up for my family,’ Ursula was asking herself, ‘What on earth can I have been thinking of?’

Chapter 38

    Annie could hardly believe her eyes. Unless Oxford minicab drivers had suddenly taken